Iran's Judiciary Commutes Death Sentences of Some Juvenile Offenders

The Iranian judiciary has agreed to commute the death sentences of six people
who were sentenced to death while they were juveniles while refusing the
requests of four others, Tehran's Prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi announced on
February 8, 2017.

Rupert Colville, the UN high commissioner for human rights, welcomed the news on
February 10 but said his
"office nevertheless remains concerned regarding another juvenile, Hamid Ahmadi,
who was 17 years old when he was sentenced to death for the fatal stabbing in
2008 of a young man during a fight."

Colville added that the Iranian court relied on confessions allegedly obtained
under torture while Ahmadi was at a police station and being denied access to a
lawyer and his family "in violation of international guarantees of fair trial
and due process."

Ahmadi's execution was set for February 11, but Colville cited reports that it
has been delayed for 10 days.

Dowlatabadi said the decision to commute some of the death sentences was
primarily based on Article 91 of Iran's
Islamic Penal Code, which allows death sentences to be reduced "if mature
people under eighteen years of age do not realize the nature of the crime
committed or its prohibition, or if there is uncertainty about their full mental
development, according to their age..."

Dowlatabadi also said that
the death sentences of 44 prisoners convicted of drug crimes were under review
by a special committee set up by his office "to ensure no one's life will be
irreversibly taken by mistake."

One of the six detainees who was saved from execution, Mohammad Ghaviandam, was
convicted of committing murder when he was 13 years old. He was on death row for
17 years before his sentenced was commuted this month, according to a report published
by the centrist Shahrvand newspaper on February 8, 2017.

No other information is available on the other five detainees who had their
death sentences commuted, or on the four who remain on death row.

"Before the implementation of Article 91 in (the year) 2013, there were many
cases of criminals under the age of 18 who were not mature enough to understand
what they had done, but the law said they had to be hanged," said Mohammad
Kazemi, a member of the Parliamentary Committee on Legal and Judicial Affairs,
on February 8, 2017.

"However, commuting the death sentence of six juveniles by the Tehran prosecutor
is proof that Article 91 was a major reform that certainly conforms better with
human rights standards," he added

According to the International Covenant on Civil Political Rights and the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, it is illegal to execute someone for
crimes committed under the age of eighteen. Iran is party to both treaties, but
remains one among a handful of countries still putting juveniles to death.

In his September 2016 report,
former United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Ahmed Shaheed noted
"with great concern that under articles 146 and 147 of the Islamic Penal Code,
the Islamic Republic of Iran retains the death penalty for boys of at least 15
lunar years of age and girls of at least 9 lunar years."

In an editorial published on Feb 9, the centrist Shahrvand news
site described the decision to commute some of the death sentences as "a good
development" and quoted Alireza Daghighi, the lawyer of one of the juvenile
death row prisoners, saying that since 2013, the judiciary's policy on punishing
juvenile offenders had become "less theological and more logical."